Quote:
Originally Posted by jmb
if you are going to propose an analogy, please make sure the situations are analogous first
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JMB let me try to say why Mr Bah Humbug's analogy is faulty.
An analogy must be similar in as many respects as possible to the original situation and only then will it be justified to say that what follows from one will apply to the the other.
If you buy the item in the store and walk away with it, the store having delivered the tem to you, does not have a pending contract to fulful. Immediately this is different from your situation, where the airline collected you money and has not yet deliveed the service. Their delivery of the service is pending. This is a major distinction. Can a party with a pending contract to fulfil discontinue the service for their own reasons?
A second distinction is that in Mr Humbug's example it is the customer who returns to the merchant to say he no longer wants the item. In your case it is the airline who comes to the customer and says that this service that you paid for will not be delivered.
A third major distinction is the availability of the item or service purchased. If you buy an item in Sears, and for some reason it has to be returned, when Sears returns your money, you go to JCPenney or Target or elsewhere (and most cities have dozens of places where these types of goods are available). For an airline ticket, unless it is a route passing through a major hub, you likely will find only one other airline operating the route. When an airline discontinue a route that passengers have paid for, the airline must know that the passengers are now put to the hassle of finding another airline. Here the only thing in favour of the airline, is that they have given you notice.
A fourth distinction and this is relevant to the question of the adequacy of notice, is that price of airline tickets is something dynamic. We all know that usually it goes up and in your case it has. Mr Humbug's example of a customer purchase in a store is different. Consumer purchases in stores usually do not go up that quickly. So even though you get notice and you go to another airline, you find that the price has gone up.
So a return of your money is not adequate.